Fast-changing events, including regional protests and the surge of rioting across the Muslim world, have complicated the task of protecting the Winter Games. The host city's police chief still believes security plans are flexible and thorough enough to avert serious problems. "Our plan, which has been in preparation for many years, took into account the possible emergence of new problems," Rodolfo Poli said in an interview at his office Wednesday with The Associated Press. "We're policemen, not altar boys," he added. "We always think more pessimistically than what happens in reality." Poli, a veteran of Italy's long-running battle against domestic terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades, said authorities are bracing for attempts by leftist and anti-globalization protesters to ... http://www.cbsnews.com

The editors of a New York alternative newspaper that drew criticism last year for making light of Pope John Paul’s failing health resigned Wednesday over what they called their managers’ refusal to publish controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, have sparked fury from some Muslims and violent protests in Europe and the Middle East. For many Muslims, Islam forbids images of the prophet. One cartoon showed Muhammad with a turban resembling a bomb.In an article on the New York Observer’s Web site on Wednesday, Harry Siegel said that he and three colleagues on the editorial board of the New York Press resigned after being ordered not to print the cartoons in an issue dedicated to the controversy. ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11239608/from/RSS/

A man whose domestic troubles gained notoriety when his then-wife cut off his penis in 1993 has again been acquitted of a domestic battery charge. John Wayne Bobbitt, 38, acknowledged a pattern of domestic trouble after Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge Toy Gregory ruled Tuesday that Bobbitt's estranged wife, Joanna Ferrell, had not been injured."I've always had a problem with judgment, particularly when it comes to women," Bobbitt said.He was convicted in February 2003 of battery involving Ferrell, prompting a northern Nevada judge to revoke his probation and send him to prison for his role in a 1999 store theft.Bobbitt was acquitted of a domestic violence charge in Las Vegas after an August 2004 incident involving Ferrell and her teenage son....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184283,00.html

THE sprawling new £850,000 suburban home of Melbourne crime figure Mick Gatto bears more than a passing resemblance to the home of American television’s favourite neurotic gangster, Tony Soprano. The similarities became even more vivid on Tuesday morning when the former heavyweight boxer and “construction consultant” emerged in dressing gown and slippers to hurl eggs at television crews camped on the footpath. Gatto had reason to be agitated. The previous night his alleged lieutenant, Mario Condello, had been gunned down in the driveway of his home on the other side of Melbourne, joining a long list of Gatto associates who have departed this earth prematurely during the city’s eight-year gangland war. The killings — nearly 30 so far — have ripped apart the city’s criminal underclass, fuelled rumours of police corruption and unleashed a media circus of lurid proportions. ...http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2031335,00.html

Microsoft is warning Windows and Internet Explorer users to take steps to prevent two security exploits. The two advisories affect Microsoft Windows Millennium and Internet Explorer 5. Users of Internet Explorer 5.0 and Internet Explorer 5.5 on Windows Millennium Edition and Windows 2000 face possible attacks from misuse of Windows Metafile graphic images to take control of computers. According to the advisory, this vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the user's system. Still bruised by previous WMF security flaws, the Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft emphasized the current WMF exploit is different from the problem patched last month. Unlike last month's spyware concerns, this flaw requires some action by users, such as opening an e-mail attachment or clicking a link that takes them to a malicious Web site. The immediate cure: installing Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1. ...http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3583646

El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego and Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West delivered a message before a Congressional Homeland Security subcommittee on Tuesday. But U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes (D) El Paso, believes the sheriffs may have an agenda, and that some of the testimony presented "didn't make sense." "Tell them, it ends here, it ends now, there will be no more incursions," - that's the message that T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, delivered in his testimony."They are basically running over us down there," said Sheriff West. "Why is Mexico just sitting back and allowing this to happen?" said Bonner. Taking center stage at the hearing was the Jan. 23 incursion in Hudspeth County, where sheriff's deputies pursued three SUVs filled with narcotics. When one of those SUVs became stuck in the river. Sheriff's deputies say they were surrounded by Mexican military....http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/6823674/detail.html